Boxes
by Eagles Meow
Summary: Just something that popped into my head one night. House reflects on why he acts the way he does.


Disclaimer: I own nothing. I think we all knew that.

A/N: I was really bored one night, and this is what came out of my convoluted brain. Sorry if I don't make sense. It's mostly just House thinking to himself about why he is the way he is. Reviews really mean a lot to this teen.

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People seem to think I was born an ass.

People are idiots. They think that I must have been born like this, since they know nothing of my youth. I don't talk about it much. I learned many years ago that my life is my own business, and nobody else's.

It probably wasn't the best way to grow up, but hey, it worked. It worked a bit too well. Years of telling myself that my life was nobody's business but my own, and that I shouldn't tell anybody anything about me eventually took their toll. Now, it's not that I _shouldn't _tell people about me, but that I _can't_. I _can't _tell anybody about the pain, because I taught myself that I simply could not tell others about pain, though it was a different pain in those days. One that I'd thought was my fault, at least back then.

I know better now. I know in my mind that other people care about me, but I still can't get my heart and my mouth to understand that. I _can't _show affection to others. Back when I was a child, I came to some pretty interesting conclusions about the world. Not that everybody lies. That came later. Even before that, I learned some things about myself and the world I lived in.

First, I could not tell people about my pain. It wasn't their business. They could do nothing about it, so why should I bother? I shut people out, simply because if I let them get close, they'd notice the bruises, and if somebody ever asked I'd be in such deep trouble. It happened once or twice when I was younger, before I knew, so I knew the consequences from experience. They were pretty painful consequences.

Second, there was no point to making friends. I was just going to leave anyways, so what was the point of getting attached to somebody? Friendship would just cause pain in the end. I blocked myself off from the world before I was even a teenager. I let myself become devoted to learning everything and anything I possibly could, instead of making friends, instead of bonding with humans, I bonded to knowledge in general, and later, to medicine.

Third, people view others as puzzles. They will become obsessed with strangers until they have devised a box, constructed of adjectives, to place the stranger in. I didn't want people to have to dig to find a box for me. That was dangerous. They might discover the cause of conclusion number one. Or, they'd become attached to me, hurting me in a more psychological way, as stated in conclusion two. Therefore, I came to conclusion three, that it was easiest to make myself a box. By the time I was in college, and away from my parents, which were the causes of numbers one and two, number three was far too deeply ingrained into my being. My idea own personal self had become mixed into the outward self I put on for everyone else, until I could no longer distinguish one from the other. Maybe I was something else, but I no longer knew how to act like I had any compassion, any connection to humanity. I had lost that oh so important developmental stage where I become conscious of the feelings of people around me, where I learned to care about them. I lived in the box I'd constructed. It became my barrier between the child inside, the one that still hadn't developed as much as it should have, and the ass I let the rest of the world see. Nothing could hurt me if they couldn't find anything behind the exterior, and if I knew the exterior wasn't real. I made that box because I didn't want people to bother me, and if they got a box right from the start to put me in, they wouldn't bother me. That's just the way human nature works, and who am I to go against human nature?

These three conclusions about the world I lived in led me to one last idea. In all the places I'd lived, all the societies I'd found myself navigating, a few things remained constant. One constant was that those who did not care for others would be thrust to the edges. I couldn't care for other people, I didn't _want _to play their manipulative little games, trying to get the upper hand. If I wouldn't do that, and I couldn't do that, I had two choices. Either I could do just what society wanted, and live on the edges, not bothering their elegant little tea party world, or I could be so damn good at what I did that they'd all _have to _listen to me, to respect me. I'd be so damn good at what I did that society couldn't afford not to listen to me.

That's how I ended up how I am. Not because it's not my nature, not because I am in pain, but simply because I know no other way to cope with the world.


End file.
